


You Look Terrible

by mckayla (steveromanov)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3842536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steveromanov/pseuds/mckayla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Steve sarcastically told Natasha she looked terrible after the bye-bye bikinis comment, and one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Look Terrible

**One.**

It had become an inside joke, ironically, as the statement was originally spoken during a time when SHIELD was crumbling, Fury had just _died_ (though, they later learned, not really), and the both of them were unsure of who to trust, each other included. It was a time when only dark humor was the only humor suitable. When it was okay to talk about scars and make light about how you got them by saying stuff like _bye-bye bikinis_ and being sarcastically told _yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now_ in return.

It started—after the hospital, of course—when Stark was hosting a fundraising benefit for some charity that required the entire team of Avengers to attend for face value, if anything. And although Natasha would have preferred to be doing anything but, Stark had saved her ass during a mission a week prior and she figured she owed him.  With that, she reluctantly got ready for the formal event; styling her hair in silky waves that cascaded over her shoulders and donning a shimmery black gown and pair of heels she’d bought at Pepper’s behest. She found utterly ironic the fact that her get-up was reminiscent of a certain Natalie Rushman; briefly allowed herself to remember the time she flipped Happy on his ass (he _still_ winced at the sight of her on occasion) in Stark’s gym. Then she was off, hooking a pair of dangly earrings into her lobes and summoning the elevator in the hallway.

Steve was there when the doors parted, apparently coming from his own quarters—which was directly a floor above hers—himself. He was dressed in a form-fitting black tux, the bow tie hanging undone around his neck, and he was leaning against the car’s wall with his hands in his pockets. She had to admit, he cleaned up pretty nicely. He lifted his head just enough to glance up at her, a smirk flickering over his mouth as she regarded him with an eyebrow raised in expectation.

“You look terrible,” he’d said, voice dry but not insulting.

It’d been almost a year since the whole takedown of Hydra, and even though her memory was far greater than most, it took her a few moments to realize that he was joking. She scoffed, a faint smile on her face, before joining him inside. “You still haven’t seen me in a bikini yet,” she teased.

To his credit, he didn’t blush. Instead he chuckled, looked her physique over out of the corner of his eye when he thought she was busy applying lip gloss, and smoothly glanced away when she put the tube of gloss back in her clutch. He was quick, but she was a spy, after all, and she noticed virtually everything going around her. Had she been anyone else, he probably would have gotten away with the innocent check-out. In all honesty, she thought it was a bit flattering. And being who she was, she’d gotten used to flattery long ago.

“You need help with that?” She asked, gesturing at her neck but looking at the tie still hanging around his.

Still, he reached up as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Realization dawned over his features. “Oh, well, I…”

“Don’t know how to tie a bowtie,” she finished, smiling as he gave her a little shrug. Without any question, she crossed the small space between them and clasped the ends of the black tie in her fingers, meeting his eyes once to confirm that she had his consent—she did—before glancing back down and focusing on her hands. “It’s really not that difficult, honestly. If Clint can do it, you can.”

“I never learned,” he replied. She briefly watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with the words.

“You never had to.” It was true; he didn’t. A bowtie required formality, and whenever that was compulsory, Steve usually wore his military formalwear. He knew how to tie a regular tie, sure, but he couldn’t exactly show up at a benefit in a business suit. And in his formalwear, he’d stick out more than he usually did. “It’s fine. I’m going to teach you right now.”

Natasha glanced up at him to see if he was paying attention. He was rapt, blue eyes focused on hers. His lips might have even been parted a little, but she decided not to focus on that. She pointedly lifted the tie’s ends for him to see. “The left side has to be a little longer, okay?” He nodded. “You’ve got to cross it over the right, then take it and tuck it between your neck and the tie.” Her fingertips grazed the dip between his collarbones as she did so. “Then you take the right, hold it sideways, and drape the left over. Lift it up so that there’s a loop and put the right through there. And then…” Her voice trailed off as she finished, grasping the edges and tugging until the knot pulled taut. “Voila. There you have it.”

She waited a moment before dropping her hands; let her fingers linger for a bit before figuring if she held on any longer then she’d do something she might regret come later. As if reading her mind, Steve fleetingly glanced down at her lips as she took a step back and casually observed her handiwork. If he was really observant, which she knew he was, he’d notice that she was pointedly avoiding looking at him anywhere in the face. “You think you can handle it the next time around?”

Steve’s lips quirked up in a boyish grin, immediately dissolving any tension that formed in what little space that’d been between them. “I’ve got an eidetic memory. I’ll manage.”

“Show off.” Natasha rolled her eyes but grinned nonetheless. When the elevator doors parted only a few seconds later, the two of them stepped off and joined the rest of their team—and their dates—in the lobby.

* * *

**Two.**

The second time, she actually had been in a bikini.

Now, when she said what she’d said in the hospital room, she’d been mostly joking. She had no quarrel with wearing a bikini, had no quarrel with showing her scars. People who knew her knew that she acquired them in her line of work—how could she _not_ , getting stabbed and shot at as much as she did? Still, she was a human being, and she got her insecurities every now and then. Sure, she wished she didn’t have scars, but they were there. There was nothing she could do about them.

And when it was hot as hell outside and she and her teammates had a private beach to themselves? Wearing a bikini was inevitable, even if she didn’t want to (granted, she could have worn a one-piece cover-up, but let’s be frank—that’s not really her style). The boys were already gathered on the shore; Clint, Thor, Jane, Darcy, Tony and Sam playing a game of makeshift volleyball as Steve and Bruce lounged off to the side either meditating—you could guess which one was doing that—or just watching everything around them. As Natasha and Pepper emerged from the beach house’s back porch, Steve turned and smiled at them, eyes slightly narrowed to block out the sun.

He wasn’t shy about looking Natasha up-and-down. She was wearing a white knit bikini, a burgundy sarong draped over her waist and slit down the side to show off one of her toned legs. By the shit-eating grin Steve was sporting, she already knew what he was going to say. “Wow. You look terrible.”

Pepper looked very surprised by the way Natasha tipped her head back and chuckled instead of giving him a death glare. “You’ve got not room to speak with those stars-and-spangles trunks, Rogers,” the redhead smirked, smoothing her hair over her shoulder as she walked past him and to the tiki bar. She might have sashayed her hips a little bit, but no one was going to accuse her of it anytime soon.

Steve glanced down at his swim trunks, laughing. “They were a gift from Tony!”

“Oh, honey. Never accept any gifts from Tony,” Pepper patted him on the cheek as she, too, walked by, giving him a sympathetic look. “I learned that the hard way.”

“I couldn’t just say no,” he argued.

Natasha, from her stool at the bar, looked at Steve from over her sunglasses. “Clearly. But that doesn’t mean you had to wear them.”

“Actually, it was either those or a pair of one-size-too-small speedos,” Bruce chimed in, eyes still closed.

As Pepper laughed bashfully in her drink at the thought of Steve in nothing but a pair of tiny speedos, Natasha lifted her eyebrow and leaned back, appraising the captain unashamedly. Even as ridiculous as the patriotic trunks were, Steve was built like a god. Broad shoulders, nipped-in waist; hard, strong muscles covered by thick, shiny skin. Seriously, he gave even Thor a run for his money, if the way Jane was ogling him was any indication. The astrophysicist's distraction resulted in her getting hit in the side of the head by the volleyball, at which Darcy laughed so hard she fell face-first into the sand.

“Why not the speedos, Rogers? You didn’t want anyone to see _your_ …spangles?” Natasha’s smirk was mostly hidden by the lip of her martini glass, but she saw Steve’s scoff and tiny blush all the same.

“Not like they’re seeing yours,” he countered, pointedly glancing at her crossed legs. With them crossed, her thighs were left uncovered by the sarong. 

“Touché, Cap,” she raised her glass with a smile and a wink. “Touché.”

* * *

**Three.**

Occasionally, Natasha got nightmares. When she did, being in her apartment seemed a tad too confining, so she often took the elevator up to the communal floor and hung about for a few hours until she got tired enough to doze off again. However, this time Steve was already sitting at the breakfast counter, looking just as sleepless as she.

Even so, that didn’t stop him from giving her a tiny smirk after he looked up from his sketch pad. “You look terrible.”

“I’m aware,” she mumbled, though she couldn’t hide the smile on her face as she shuffled over and took the stool next to him. She _was_ aware, actually; having gotten a good look at herself in her bathroom mirror before she left and deciding she frankly didn’t care. Some of her curls had escaped from the already messy bun she had when she’d fallen asleep, her face lacked any sort of makeup, and she was wearing a pair of old black leggings and a cotton tee that swamped her frame. Even with Steve sitting there shirtless and in nothing else but a pair of flannel pajama pants (and looking every bit like the chiseled super-soldier she knew he was), she still didn’t care that she appeared worse for wear. It was probably nothing Steve hadn’t seen before, anyway.

His eyebrows twitched into a frown as she folded her arms on the counter top and tiredly buried her face between them. “Hey,” he said, dropping his pencil to brush her elbow with his fingers. “You okay?”

Natasha lifted her head just enough to peek out a single green eye. She looked up at him and saw that he appeared genuinely concerned. “Bad dreams,” she shrugged. A look of understanding momentarily crossed his face. “You know the drill.”

“Yeah,” Steve swallowed. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” she answered. “You?”

“I draw about it,” he laughed quietly, gesturing at his sketchbook. “Words don’t really help me.”

She sighed. “I know the feeling.”

“Do you want me to leave?” He asked after a while. “I’m sure you didn’t come up here looking for a social buddy so much as someplace to clear your head.”

“No,” the answer came almost embarrassingly quickly. She cleared her throat. “It’s okay. I like to watch you draw, anyway.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “You tune out everything and everyone when you draw. It’s kind of refreshing.”

He gave her a disbelieving scoff. “Being ignored is refreshing to you?”

“Believe it or not, yeah,” she lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. “Ironic, I know, considering I spent majority of my life lurking in the shadows. But I’m used to a lot of people looking at me or talking about me for many different reasons, big or small. You, however, seem to forget that you’re not the only person on earth when you’re drawing.” A small, wistful smile spread across her face as she briefly glanced down. “It’s nice.”

He was smiling himself, eyes trailing over her face with something akin to reverence swimming in them, but he didn’t say another word as he turned back to his sketchpad and continued drawing in contented silence. Soon, the only thing that could be heard was the sound of lead scratching against paper.

Not even ten minutes later, he could hear Natasha softly snoring at his side.

* * *

**Four.**

Natasha opened the door a minute or so after he’d knocked, barely dressed and makeup half-done. Despite the fact that she was only wearing a pair of black underwear and the midnight blue blouse she’d picked out for their first date together, Steve didn’t blush.

Instead, as expected, he smiled and said, “You look terrible.”

She rolled her eyes, already moving away to finish getting ready. Without looking back at him, she called, “The way you’re staring at my ass tells me you’re lying, Rogers.”

“What’re you talking about? I’m always honest,” he innocently replied, and although she’d left him in the living room to put some pants on, she could tell that he was smirking.

“So I’ve been told,” she said. She smirked, too. “Not sure I believe it, though.”

“Ouch,” he responded, mock-offended. Natasha quickly finished applying her eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss before slipping on her heels and grabbing her jacket, rejoining Steve in the living room afterwards. He didn’t say anything as she came out, nor did he move. In fact, all he did was stare, and Natasha lifted an expectant eyebrow at him in return.

“What?” She asked, only _mildly_ self-conscious. They were going on their first date, after all.

Steve blinked and forced his eyes up to hers. “Nothing, it’s just…okay, I might have lied.” That boyish grin of his appeared on his face again. “You look great, Nat.”

“Flatterer,” she rolled her eyes, smiling. “But thanks. You’re not too shabby, either.”

He grinned and held out his arm for her to take. “Ready?”

She smiled, too. “As I’ll ever be.”

* * *

**Five.**

She woke to the feel of lips pressed to the side of her neck, a heavy arm draped over her waist. In her sleepy haze, she was vaguely aware that there was a very warm, very _naked_ body pressed up to her. She quickly realized she was naked too, and…

 _Oh_.

“Morning,” Steve grumbled into her skin, and _wow_. He sounded incredibly alluring when his voice was all deep and sleep-heavy. “You sleep okay?”

“Morning, and definitely,” Natasha replied, slightly turning so that she could peck him on the lips. He smiled and hummed in content. “Last night was a long time coming.”

He quirked a brow. “Oh, yeah?”

“You know, this whole innocent act you’ve got going on is only believable for so long,” she playfully shoved him on the shoulder before her voice took on a slightly huskier note. “Especially when your tongue does wonders.”

“Well, thankfully, the wonders my tongue does are exclusive to you,” he replied, though he must have taken her raised eyebrows the wrong way because he quickly said, “If, uh, if you want them to be.”

He was asking her if what they had, what they were doing, was okay. They’d been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but what they shared the previous night brought their relationship to a whole new level. Romantic relationships and the things they required out of her, intimacy being chiefly among them, were a foreign territory to her. Steve knew it, Clint knew it (though he was also no better at relationships than she, hence their mutual agreement that one would just not work out between them)— _everyone_ knew it.

However, Natasha was surprised to find that a romantic relationship was now a foreign territory she didn’t mind crossing, especially if it was with Steve. He’d long since snuck past all of her defenses, long since gained her trust, her respect. She trusted him with her life. And, now that she thought about it, she trusted him with her heart.

“I want this.” She murmured, reaching up to cup his jaw.

Steve smiled, relieved. She kissed him again. “Me too,” he muttered against her mouth. The kiss quickly moved on from chaste and sweet to something more heated and passionate, with Steve rolling over so that he was half on top of her, his hand snaking down the front of her body to the heat between her thighs. He was mouthing at her neck now, teasing her with slight brushes of his fingers, and she clung on to his shoulders, willing him to give her more.

Instead, he lifted his head and let his blue eyes hover over her face. She had bed head and the growing flush in her cheeks was a lighter shade of her hair. Steve’s amused expression didn’t go by her unnoticed, and in a slightly breathless voice, she flatly intoned, “Out with it.”

He grinned and, at the same time as he finally slipped a finger inside, said, “You look terrible.”

* * *

**Plus one.**

Frankly, Steve never thought he’d be standing where he was now. He’d never thought this day would come.

Oh, he’d thought about it multiple times. Entertained the idea of it— _longed_ for it, even. He had dreams—some during the day, some at night—about this day. He’d envision the white lace, the black ties. There’d be a woman beside him, one faceless but distinguishable by the vibrant red of her lips. Ones he knew, ones he would never forget. But he could let _go_ ; move on, and that’s what he did—right when the red left her lips and moved straight to her hair.

He saw her now, walking towards him. This wasn’t a dream, though. This was real life, and he was Steve Rogers, the man who never thought this day would ever come for him, and she was Natasha Romanoff, the woman who he never thought he’d ever share this day with. He couldn’t believe it. He was so _happy_. And she looked so breathtaking as she approached him, Clint leading her down the aisle in her white dress and with her scarlet strands pinned up in a sophisticated-looking chiffon (her term, not his). He was smiling so wide that his cheekbones were beginning to hurt, but he didn’t care. He was too elated, too _enthralled_ to care. Because this was real, this was happening; he wasn’t dreaming and he wasn’t hallucinating and Natasha looked as stunning as _ever_ , so much so that he was aware that his eyes were glossy with unshed tears. If this were any other day, she probably would have smacked him and teased him for being such a sap. But as she finally stopped in front of him, Clint leaving her side to join the line of groomsmen, Steve could see that her own eyes were a bit watery, too.

“Hey,” she whispered, smiling.

Steve smiled, too. And when he spoke next, he was almost breathless. “You look absolutely beautiful, Natasha.”

He could have sworn the right there, as he spoke the words, she let a single tear slide down her cheek. Whether it was there or not, Steve still wiped it away.


End file.
